


Fashion Sense

by fredbassett



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby and Connor are stuck in the past and need to make some creative fashion choices to be less conspicuous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fashion Sense

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dunderklumpen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunderklumpen/gifts).



“How do I look?” Abby demanded, striking a pose in front of him, hands on her hips.

“Different,” Connor conceded.

They’d stolen some clothes from a hut in the edge of the forest as their 21st century clothing had stood out like a sore thumb in what appeared to be the Middle Ages. Connor had absolutely no desire to end up being burned at the stake as a witch, nor had Abby.

They’d grabbed the clothes and scarpered as fast as they could, dashing back into the forest.

Their own clothes were now hidden in the branches of tree near where the anomaly had closed, thereby standing them in the past during what should have been a routine trip to gather some data.

Abby had refused to dress in the cumbersome clothes that seemed normal dress for the women on this time, preferring to steal a set of boy’s clothing for herself. She was now dressed in tight but supple leather breeches, topped with a coarse brown woollen tunic worn over a cloth shirt. She’d also managed to find a pair of leather shoes that just about fitted her, although with the thick woollen socks she’d taken off a washing line, she claimed her toes were a bit squashed.

She’d scrubbed her eye make-up off before they’d gone anywhere near the cottage, and they’d rubbed some dirt into her bleached blonde hair to make it slightly less startling.

Connor looked much the same, although the shoes he’d found were looser and very well worn. He’d had to tie them onto his feet with some strips ripped from his shirt.

They felt guilty about stealing clothes from people who obviously didn’t have much but there was no way they could have gone around in their own gear, and they had nothing that could be used for bartering. These were suspicious times and they had to do their best to blend in.

Connor was torn between wanting to stay near the anomaly site and the need to get some distance away from the cottage in case they met the people whose clothes they’d nicked. The only thing he’d kept with him was the hand-held anomaly detector. Connor had done a lot of work on those devices since his year in the Cretaceous, and now they had triple the range and at least double the batter life of the original models. He’d also made a small solar-powered charger for them as well, so he was confident that they could put some distance between them and the anomaly site and yet still be alerted to its return.

“You look great,” Connor added, with less than perfect truth, and he couldn’t help wondering if the clothes they were wearing were home to fleas and lice.

Despite their situation, Abby gave him a gamine grin. “What you really mean is that I look like I’ve fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”

Connor grinned back, admiring her ability to remain cheerful. They’d been stuck in the past before and had survived, so he knew they could do it, but in some ways he preferred the risk from creatures to the risk posed by interaction with other human beings. He wasn’t a great student of history – prehistory had always been his preference – but he knew that strangers rarely fared well in any time, especially not ones as different as these probably were, not even speaking the same language, even though technically English probably was the native tongue, just not English that they would be likely to recognise.

An angry shout from some distance away sent a jolt of fear through his stomach.

“I think they’re onto us.” He grabbed Abby’s hand and together they started to run.

The sound of a deep-throated howl from a hound told him that they were in big trouble. They might manage to outrun an angry mob – running away from dinosaurs during their time in the Cretaceous had left both of them pretty fit, but they had no chance of outrunning a dog.

As they ran, Connor heard a bleep from the anomaly detection devise he’d stowed inside his heavy tunic. Fumbling his way through the folds of material, Connor brought out the sleek black plastic box and looked at the screen. “It’s back, Abby!”

“Then we need to be running the other way!”

Connor groaned. “You mean back towards the men with dogs who’re annoyed we nicked their stuff?”

“No, I mean back towards the men on horses with dogs who are annoyed we nicked their stuff.”

“On horses?” Connor knew his voice had risen a couple of octaves, but that always happened when he was scared. “What the hell are a bunch of medieval peasants doing with horses?”

“Shall we stop and ask them?”

“Rather we didn’t,” he panted.

“They won’t expect us to double back,” Abby declared, squeezing his hand and dragging him after her, as she rounded a large oak tree and started running back the way they’d come, taking a wide sweep to avoid running straight into their pursuers.

It was hard to run quietly through a forest. Connor was horribly conscious about every cracked twig and knew they were leaving a wide trail of footprints in the soft earth, but all he could hope for was that the sound of their pursuit would mask the sound of their flight and that tracks would be less easily visible from horseback.

His heart was hammering away in his chest like a piston and it was starting to get difficult to draw a deep breath through the fear constricting his chest, but Abby still had firm hold of his hand, determined that they wouldn’t get separated. Connor could hear the thump of horses’ hooves on the ground and the shouts of at least two men. He couldn’t tell how far away from the anomaly they were or even if they were running in the right direction. He had no choice other than to rely on Abby’s sense of direction, but she’d never let him down before and he was certain she wouldn’t start now. It was a good job she’d chosen to dress as a boy, otherwise they would have had no chance of keeping up any sensible speed if she’d been wearing a long dress.

The thwap of an arrow hitting a tree trunk too close for comfort was a very unwelcome development. Abby swerved to the right, dragging him after her. She was aiming for a denser part of the forest where the horses might not be able to follow, but the dogs would still be able to come after them and the riders would be a good deal fresher than they were.

Connor could feel the sweat slicking the palm of his hand as he struggled to keep up with Abby. His stolen shoes were loose on his feet and he could feel them working out of their bindings. If they came off, he’d be well and truly stuffed. In desperation, he spared a glance at the portable detector clutched in his free hand. The anomaly was still open and they were getting closer to it.

“We’ve got to keep going, Connor!” Abby urged.

He ignored the problem of his shoes and did his best to lengthen his stride to match her speed. A fallen tree trunk loomed up in the undergrowth. Abby cleared it easily, but he botched the take off, turning his ankle on a piece of rotting wood and failing to make the jump. He crashed down hard, winding himself. The plastic case flew out of his hand.

Abby turned around, saw where it had gone and dived after it tucking it inside her tunic before reaching down and doing her best to haul Connor to his feet. He loved the fact that she never gave up, but she needed to do the sensible thing now and save herself.

He opened his mouth to try to squeeze the words out, but she silenced him with a look. “Get up! We’re nearly there!”

He struggled to his feet, doing his best to blot out the noise from the barking dogs and the men yelling at them. It sounded like they’d been forced to abandon their horses and give chase on foot, but his fall had cost them valuable time.

“Stay down!”

The shouted warning from Becker came just before the deafening blast of a combat shotgun. It was followed up by the bang of a smoke grenade detonating. The cavalry had clearly decided that shock and awe was the way to go with this particular rescue and Connor certainly wasn’t going to argue with those tactics.

“To me, now! Move!”

On command, the pair of them scrambled to their feet and dashed towards the sound of his voice, and then kept running, straight through the anomaly and back into a patch of scrubby woodland on the outskirts of Nottingham.

Becker crashed through after them, yelling, “Lock it!

One of the security team did exactly that and a moment later, the anomaly had shrunk to a glowing orb in the air, spinning lazily in the air like a gigantic Christmas tree bauble.

Connor sank to his knees, gasping for breath.

Abby threw her arms around Becker and gave him a hug.

The soldier hugged her back. Becker had got a lot less uptight since their return from the Cretaceous. He looked them both up and down. “Nice kit! Mud’s a good look on you.”

Abby swatted him on the arm. “Get your clothes off, Connor!”

He stared at her in amazement. “Er, I don’t think this is quite the time or the place, Abbs…”

She rolled her eyes in a gestured that owed a lot to a long association with Lester. “Get your clothes off, we need to give these back before the anomaly disappears again. It’s not fair to keep them, those people don’t have much and we stole from them.”

“They had horses and dogs,” Connor pointed out, not feeling in the slightest bit charitable to their pursuers, not after an arrow had smacked into a tree a couple of feet from his heads.”

“We were being chased by nobles, not peasants. They were probably just in the right place at the right time and wanted some sport. Come on, off with them!”

Grumbling to himself – something that never cut any ice with Abby – Connor reluctantly stripped off behind one of the vans and clambered into some spare clothes that one of Becker’s men handed to him. Once again, the boots were too big.

Abby looked pretty swamped by the black uniform, but still looked a lot better than him, even through her hair was still filthy.

She bundled the stolen clothes up into a big ball, tied them inside one of the shirts, and then stood to one side of the anomaly.

“On the count of three…”

Becker looked exasperated, but he knew better than to argue with Abby once she’d made her mind up.

“One… two… three…”

The anomaly opened. Abby threw the ball of clothes through it. The anomaly shrunk back to a ball again. She turned around to Connor and high-fived him.

He put his arms around her waist and kissed her, regardless of the cat-calls from the soldiers. Oversized combat gear or Middle Ages chic, Connor really didn’t care. Abby was beautiful no matter what she wore.


End file.
